Time for action – introducing variable references

We will use the varioref commands, \vref and \vpageref , to achieve enhanced reference texts:

1. Open our current example. Add the package varioref to your preamble:

   \usepackage{varioref}

2. Edit the content of the second chapter:

   \emph{amsmath}, on position \ref{item:amsmath} of the top list
   in section~\vref{sec:packages}, is indispensable to high-quality
   mathematical typesetting in \LaTeX. \emph{amssymb}, on position
   \ref{item:amssymb}, provides a huge amount of math symbols.
   See also the footnote \vpageref{fn:project}.

3. Typeset twice and look at the result:

   

What just happened?

The command \vref checked the distance to the referenced section. As it's on the facing page, that is, on the preceding page in a two-sided layout, it wrote "1.2 on the facing page". Similar for \vpageref, it refers to "the preceding page".

\vref{name} acts in the following way:

• If the reference and \label{name} are on the same page, it behaves exactly like \ref. The page number...